Elon Musk is planning to fly tourists around the moon aboard a SpaceX craft in 2018 for an undisclosed sum of cash. However, Amazon's Jeff Bezos is planning something much bigger and longer term. He wants to create a delivery service to the moon so as to establish and then continually replenish a permanent base there.

As well as Amazon, Jeff Bezos owns Blue Origin, which focuses on aerospace manufacturing and space flight. The Washington Post reveals that Blue Origin produced a confidential seven-page whitepaper on January 4 and sent it to NASA and the Trump transition team. It details a spacecraft and lander for the moon. More specifically, Bezos wants backing for a moon shipping service which will be ready in 2020.

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When asked about the plans, Bezos replied to the Post stating, "It is time for America to return to the Moon — this time to stay ... A permanently inhabited lunar settlement is a difficult and worthy objective. I sense a lot of people are excited about this."

The aim is for Blue Origin to help establish a permanent colony on Mars by acting as the shipping service for equipment. Getting humans back to the Moon is beyond the scope of this initial proposal, but certainly paves the way for it to happen. There's scope for some kind of collaboration with SpaceX for getting humans there I imagine.

While potentially very lucrative for Blue Origin once established, regular moon deliveries also paves the way for a lot of off-world living questions to be answered before we inevitably head to Mars. Before any of this happens, though, Bezos needs NASA signing on to help.

Matthew is PCMag's UK-based editor and news reporter. Prior to joining the team, he spent 14 years writing and editing content on our sister site Geek.com and has covered most areas of technology, but is especially passionate about games tech. Alongside PCMag, he's a freelance video game designer. Matthew holds a BSc degree in Computer Science from Birmingham University and a Masters in Computer Games Development from Abertay University.
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